Portable computers and personal computer or smart phone have been widely used for each area. Laptop (notebook) and tablet style computers may be found in the work environment, at home or used during travel, perhaps as a result of their advantages, particularly when equipped with wireless communicating technology. Advantages such as low power consumption, small size, low weight make the portable computer available to nearly everyone everywhere. A variety of peripheral devices, such as a mouse, are necessary for these computers.
Conventionally, the mechanical mouse included a captured moving ball and encoder wherein movement of the ball generated an x, y directional signal to control the cursor. More recently, the optical mouse has been developed, the optical mouse technology bounced a focused beam of light off a highly reflective surface to a sensor. This caused a sensor to send a signal to the computer to trigger cursor movement.